Well, Alaric was all they had now. Little Ike, born before the war, had died of hunger the first winter. Since Al’s birth they’d had no more children. The radioactivity seemed to have a slow sterilizing effect on many people.
Karen met them at the door. The mere sight of her blond vivacity lifted Wayne’s spirits. «Hello, gentlemen,» she said. «Guess what?»
«I wouldn’t know,» answered Wayne.
«Government jet was here today. We’re going to get regular air service.»
«No kidding!»
«Honest Injun, I have it straight from the pilot, a colonel no less. I was down by the port, on the way to market, about noon, when it landed, and of course forced my way into the conversation.»
«You wouldn’t have to,» said Wayne admiringly.
«Flatterer! Anyway, he was informing the mayor officially, and a few passers-by like myself threw in their two bits’ worth.»
«Hm-m-m.» Wayne entered the house. «Of course, I knew the government was starting an airline, but I never thought we’d get a place on it even if we do have a cleared area euphemistically termed an airport.»
«Anyway, think of it. We’ll get clothes, fuel, machinery, food—no, I suppose we’ll be shipping that ourselves. Apropos which, soup’s on.»
It was a good meal, plain ingredients but imaginative preparation. Wayne attacked it vigorously, but his mind was restless. «Funny,» he mused, «how our culture overreached itself. It grew top-heavy and collapsed in a war so great we had to start almost over again. But we had some machines and enough knowledge to rebuild without too many intervening steps. Our railroads and highways, for instance, are gone, but now we’re replacing them with a national airline. We’ll likewise go later directly from foot and horseback to private planes.»
«And we won’t be isolated any more, contacting the outside maybe four times a year. We’ll be part of the world again.»
«Mm-m-m—what’s left of it, and that isn’t much. Europe and most of Asia, they tell me, are too far gone to make intercourse worthwhile or even possible. The southern parts of this country and the greater part of Latin America are still pretty savage. Most people who survived the war migrated there later, to escape cold and hunger. Result—overcrowding, more famine, fighting and general lawlessness. Those who stuck it out here in the north and stayed alive came out better in the end.»
«It’ll be a curious new culture,» said Karen thoughtfully. «Scattered towns and villages, connected by airlines so fast that cities probably won’t need to grow up again. Stretches of wild country between, and—well, it’ll be strange.»
«Certainly that. But we can hardly extrapolate at this stage of the game. Look, we here in Southvale, and a lot of similarly circumstanced places, have been able to relax for some ten years now. Blights and bugs and plagues pretty well licked, outlaws rounded up or gone into remote areas—Well, we’ve been back on our feet that long. Since then, the process of re-integrating the country has gone ahead pretty steadily. We’re no longer isolated, as you said. With the government center in Oregon as a sort of central exchange, we’ve been able to trade some of the things we have for what we need, and now this regular airline service will be the way to a national economy. Martial law was… ah… undeclared nine years ago, and the formal unification of the United States, Canada, and Alaska carried out then. You and I helped elect Drummond to President last time, when the poll plane came around.»
«I know a little of that already, O omniscient one. What is all this leading up to?»
«Simply that in spite of all which has been accomplished, there’s still a long ways to go… South of us is anarchic barbarism. We have precarious contact with some towns in Latin America, Russia, China, Australia, and South Africa, otherwise we’re an island of, shall I say, civilization in a planetary sea of savagery and desolation. What will come of that? Or still more important—what will come of the mutants?»
Karen’s eyes were haggard as they searched Alaric’s unheeding face. «Perhaps at last—the superman,» she whispered.
«Not at all probable, clear. You read the official book explaining this thing. Since most mutations are recessive, though they do tend to follow certain patterns, there must have been an incredible totality of altered genes for so many to find their mates and show up in the first generation. Even after the radioactivity is gone, there’ll be all those unmatched genes, waiting for a complement to become manifest. For several centuries, there’ll be no way to tell what sort of children any couple will have, unless the geneticists figure out some system we don’t even suspect at present. Even then, the mutated genes would still be there; we couldn’t do anything about that. God only knows what the end result will be—but it won’t be human.»
«There may be other senses of that word.»
«There will be, inevitably. But they won’t be today’s.»
«Still—if all the favorable characteristics showed up in one individual, he’d be a superman.»
«You assume no unfavorable ones, possibly linked, will appear. And the odds against it are unguessable. Anyway, what is a superman? Is he a bulletproof organism of a thousand horsepower? Is he a macrocephalic dwarf talking in calculus? I suppose you mean a godlike being, a greatly refined and improved human. I grant you, a few minor changes in human physique would be desirable though not at all necessary. But any semanticist will tell you Homo sapiens are a million miles from realizing his full mental capacities. He needs training right now, not evolution.
«In any case,» finished Wayne grayly. «we’re arguing a dead issue. Homo sapiens have committed race suicide. The mutants will be man.»
«Yes—I suppose so. What do you think of the steak?»
Wayne settled down in his easy-chair after supper. Tobacco and newspapers were not being produced, and the government was still taking all the radios made in its new or revived factories. But he had a vast library, his own books and those he had salvaged from the college, and most of them were timeless. He opened a well-thumbed little volume and glanced at lines he knew by heart.
I wonder. How often I’ve wondered! And even if Burns was right, will the plowman’s common sense apply to non-humanness? Let’s see what another has to say—
His gaze descended to Alaric. The boy sprawled on the floor in a litter of open books. His eyes darted from one to another, skipping crazily, their blankness become a weird blue flicker. The books—Theory of Functions, Nuclear Mechanics, Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Principles of Psychology, Rocket Engineering, Biochemistry. None of it could be skimmed through, or alternated that way. The greatest genius of history couldn’t do it. And a senseless jumble like that—No, Alaric was just turning pages. He must be—a moron?
Well, I’m tired. Might as well go to bed. Tomorrow’s Sunday—good thing we can take holidays again, and sleep late.